Humpbacks in Moreton Bay

Zenella is not much impressed with the whales, but I am, although I have seen them more than once before. I do not go in much for the whole mystical thing about whales, and yet, it touches me that they seem to want to know us. It is almost as though they were some kindly aliens, who, though hurt by us many times before, still want us for friends.

Yes, I know. That is exactly the whole mystical thing and it's just so much bunkum, but you feel it and you cannot explain it.

Zenella is more impressed when the blow from one of the whales drenches her. I am watching the rainbow in the spray and do not feel the wet, do not realise it has come our way until I see Zenella shake it from her hair.

She is a very beautiful child. She is wilful, often angry, funny. I cannot begin to find words for her. These days I run short of words for all the things I feel. This is what life has for me and I'm grateful for it. Sometimes the churning madness that I am used to thinking of as me is calmed by it all. I can sit with a child close to me and lose myself in the smell of their hair, the milky air from the sling they sit in, the feel of their chest against mine. I do not need to think it through and perhaps it's just as well. Thinkers tend to destroy their world.

I am watching Moreton Island slip away behind us, the bright lines, blue, yellow and green of sky, sand and sea, the very image of the world I yearned for in the cold, damp days of English winters (and yet... it is the truth that I have doubts, that I fear my children's growing to become Australians, with all that means to me, because here in Brisbane is not the sophisticated world that they might have had in England, and because there is a part of me that looks on the good things I think I have about me as "English": my curiosity, my quickwittedness, my way with words, my willingness to dream and break my heart over my dreams, my tolerance, oh I don't know, what good does it think to think about what is good and bad? I have made my fucking bed and theirs too; and is it for them I fear, or for me? Do I fear that I will cease to be here among people who are not like me? Shouldn't I welcome it? Maybe I don't know, have never known what I want, and so I am always going to be disappointed -- I wish there was a way to know, as others seem to know, or at least not to care).

I know. Don't overthink it. Just do it. I know. But some days even the magic of a whale's slowly turning over in a limpid sea is not enough.

posted by Dr Zen @ 4:53 pm